Everyone has boundaries, even if they rarely get violated, or you don’t know exactly what they are, or you DO know but do not enforce well with others. Those boundaries do exist and many of us were stretched beyond what we thought we were physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of only 5 years ago. Quite a number of us were already stretched within a breath of our limits before the pandemic even set in. And now that we have made it through most of the actual disease-related parts, we are all still experiencing the aftershocks as our systems we all took for granted are appearing shakier than we could have imagined years earlier.

Even if you don’t relate to the earthquake or ripples on the surface of a pond metaphors, it is hard to deny that most of us are radically different people now than we were 5 years ago. We were ALL changed by the circumstances of spacetime we lived through. So many people I know moved or changed their family structure due to the pandemic. Others had a child or adopted pets or took new jobs or started a business. The shifts have been felt on the societal level.

It is likely that all human beings on earth, except those of the “post-pandemic” generation being born now, who will only experience the pandemic through the trauma-skewed lenses of the generations that came before them, will carry memories of how they survived and changed during the years of 2020-2023. Every single human has that in common.

But we will not have the same memories or experiences… and we were not all as truly resilient as those in different cultures. It seems to me that those who fared the worst of all are the traditional “conservatives” in “Western societies.” They have literally forgotten everything they professed to believe and left themselves vulnerable to a mass psychological attack by a series of leaders who can only be classified as somewhere in the Venn diagram of opportunistic power-grabbers, techno-libertarian assholes and delusional rage-fueled sociopaths.

No matter what anyone tells you on social media or in a campaign ad, humans have not mastered the art of time travel and it is literally impossible to make anything “great again” without looking into the future and stepping forward. The future is what you can change, and while these yahoos who keep talking about the past to put you in all the feels, they are straight up stealing the future from all of us.

We are all stretching and being stretched in different directions and it is uncomfortable, to say the least. But until you start taking action to make others stretch and move in your direction, you will keep feeling victimized. If those leaders you are so dedicated to are telling you to hate other humans or even to perpetrate violence on other humans, your eyes are no longer on the ball. They are stealing your democracy too and while you don’t respect it in the least, you will absolution miss it when it’s gone. They already took the soul and humanity out of the economy and hollowed out our ability to make a living; this is just the next domino to fall.

I’m “liberal” on many issues, but I’m firmly on the side of ALL people having access to self-governance through democracy. And when I talk about taking action, I don’t just mean voting. I mean, use the freedoms you have and press for more, and most of all, recognize that diversity is ALWAYS a strength. I bet the pope can’t solve a rubik’s cube. There are many ways to contribute to society.

So in closing, spend a little time today or this week to reflect on thresholds you have crossed, whether you were pushed/dragged by circumstances or others around you, or whether you consciously took steps to move yourself across. (Psssst, it’s both/and.) Think about who you used to be in 2019 and who you are now. If you don’t see the change in you, ask your friends, family, coworkers, or anyone in your community to share with you how they have seen you change. Think about all that progress you made in life, and if you can’t see it as progress, see it as an opportunity for future progress.

Since we cannot go backwards we must step forward, and if you need someone to hold on to as we go, just ask. I got you.